Leaf and the Toadstool World

…

1. "This has to be the wrong place."

Leaf and Bulbasaur stood at the base of the Great Santa Monica Bridge, bracing themselves against the strong afternoon winds. She held on tight to her Pokedex, checked the directions on the screen, and looked back at the strange structure once, twice. "This has to be the wrong place."

Before them was a round, squat, barely-three-story green building with a mushroom top.

"Or, you know, it'd be nice if this were the wrong place," Leaf said.

The roof had a literal, growing out of the top mushroom.

As Leaf watched it, the spotted red growth pulsated exactly once.

Bulbasaur shivered beside her.

"Don't be rude," Leaf said, half to her companion and half to herself. "People don't go to our houses and complain about them."

"Bulba."

"Fine. People don't come to my tent and complain about that. Point taken. And I'll get that hole in the wall patched before we leave town, don't worry."

Leaf and Bulbasaur stood there for another moment, staring. There was no sidewalk in this city, despite the handful of cars and busses. An older man and his still-older-than-Leaf daughter hustled around them.

"Excuse you," Leaf grumbled. She thought she saw the daughter stop. The father pulled them along, and he muttered clearly: "Pokemon Trainers owning the roads." Leaf resisted the urge to reply. Professor Oak's words echoed: Pokemon will make you feel powerful. If that happens, it's probably because you're not.

There had been more to that lecture. Something something power and responsibility and Trainer's destinies something something. Leaf hadn't paid much attention.

She wished she had paid attention before taking this stupid quest.

The strange fungus-looking building seemed to sigh and get wider, right before her eyes.

"Well," Leaf said. "Let's get this over with."

Bulbasaur shook its head and dug in its paws. "Saur."

"Fine. Ladies first, I guess."

Leaf took a step onto the bridge, which connected the main road to the home. The bridge was an outrageous crimson and gold, but her foot creaked on the first step. Bulbasaur's feet plodded behind her.

Leaf hopped the last plank and stuck her arms out at her side.

Bulbasaur finished crossing and waited at her feet. The few people she had met on the road said they had never seen such an obedient first Pokemon.

Leaf always corrected them: it wasn't that he was obedient, it was that he didn't like to rock the boat. He knew what he had to do to get out of a situation in one piece, and if it meant listening to Leaf, then that was the order of the day.

The creased brow and matching grimace on Leaf's partner told her he was starting to question that outlook.

"Don't worry, Bulbasaur." Leaf folded the note and put it back in her satchel. "You heard Belinda. In and out. No surprises, just like Pewter City."

Bulbasaur scrunched its face, and Leaf corrected herself. "Okay, so hopefully not exactly like Pewter City—"

Another gust of wind rocketed across them. Leaf felt her white hat almost come off of her head and she slammed it back down over her head of brunette hair. Another hand gripped the front of her red skirt. (Wear a skirt, her mother had said. Trainers look so cute in them.)

Bulbasaur was still looking like someone spit in his food, but this one wasn't at Leaf. He glowered past her, by the house. Leaf whipped around.

"Hi," she said to the small boy standing in the structure's open doorway. The doors' optimistic red shade matched the mushroom growing on the roof. They also stretched a good ten feet up. Leaf had to stare for a moment to make sure they weren't alive, too. Finally Leaf told the boy, "I'm the Trainer who accepted your quest. Leaf, from Pallet Town?"

The boy was in desperate need of a haircut. His black shirt and matching shorts were decorated with a spread of colorful stains, and Leaf didn't want to place them.

"Mom said you're supposed to have a Badge, or I can't let you in."

Polite kid.

Leaf wanted to walk over, put her hands on her knees, and show him her Pokedex and badges and everything, but there was a strange off-puttingness to the child's almost feline stare. Belinda would have called it 'stabby'.

"I have a badge," Leaf said. She lifted the top of her satchel. The Pewter City badge was pinned there, safe and sound. "Just got it last week."

The boy was unimpressed. He went back inside the structure and the door closed shut.

Oak's words echoed. If something looks like it's a terrible idea, there's a reason for it. Maybe it's actually terrible.

The door pulled open again, with the same silence as before. Unlike before, it pulled all the way open, and then the door beside it pulled inward as well. Leaf and Bulbasaur watched as the grand doors revealed the building's long hallway: a velvet carpet leading to yet another set of doors, with elaborate paintings of people Leaf didn't recognize on each wall.

The boy jumped out from behind the doors. "Come on, then," he said.

Bulbasaur didn't go. Leaf was the one in charge.

"Let's roll," Leaf said.

#

The night before.

It wasn't so much that Leaf was desperate. Desperate would have been begging Brock to let her win, and she and Bulbasaur took down that Onix fair and square. It was that Leaf just wasn't ever, ever going home, ever again. "And in my book, that means no asking Mom for money, either," she added.

Leaf and Bulbasaur were in the Pewter City West Hostel.. It was the only one with a vacancy, because apparently the fancy Viridian City tourists booked up all the rooms in Pewter Grand Lodgings and Granite Stays, in the fancy parts of the city. But straight-up holes in the plaster walls and continental breakfast consisting of toaster waffles that must have survived the Stone Age aside, West Hostel had an upside. There was an Open Pokeball policy, so Bulbasaur could stay out.

They had also stuck Leaf and Bulbasaur in a four-person room with just one other traveler. Her name was Belinda.

Belinda sat across from Leaf now, down in the hostel common area. "I get what you're saying," Belinda said. "I'm hella sympathetic. I just think it's a little…premature?"

"Premature?"

"You've been gone for what…a month? You can call your folks and ask for help. Nobody's judging you for it. I like to think we live in a post-judgment society." As she said this, Belinda looked both ways around the room, then fished out a tiny flask from the inside of her boot. She poured brown liquid from it into her own glass of Coke. "You want some?" Belinda asked.

Leaf glanced behind Belinda, at the snack counter. A cute boy worked there, doling out boxes of candy and bags of popcorn and glasses of Coke. Behind him, the sign: No alcohol on premises.

"I think I'm good," Leaf said. "I can't drink, anyway."

"Right, right." Belinda's smile was the textbook definition of coy. "What are you, like, nine?"

"I'm twelve," Leaf answered.

"Right, right. Big difference." Belinda drank slowly.

"How old are you, anyway?" Leaf asked.

Belinda was a combination of ages, from the top down.

Four braids of blond hair that stuck two upward and two long ones, each tied off with white ribbons.

A chest and hips that made Leaf herself blush when Belinda changed at night.

Traveler's boots that belonged on grown men.

Then you got to Belinda's blue eyes, always staring back at you, challenging.

"I'm enough to drink and old enough to die," Belinda said. "Also old enough to pay for tonight's bunk with my day's battle winnings. What do you have left on you after battles nineteen and twenty, anyway Leaf-o?" Belinda pursed her full lips. "I mean, sure, Pewter is all rock-type and there's type advantage with Bulbasaur and other Trainer-ly bullshit, but you're not supposed to throw yourself at it until you win."

"I got money after I beat Brock."

"Yeah, but I beat Brock once. What'd he give you? P3000? That's like, a good breakfast and a Super Potion. It's not all the savings you lost."

Yes, Leaf had money trouble, but she didn't admit it. She knew better than to be a twelve-year-old girl on the road, admitting to being in a vulnerable place. Pokemon Trainer or not.

"Here. I've got your back." Belinda pulled her own Pokedex from the inside of her denim jacket. The Pokedex flipped open sideways whereas the ones from Kanto opened like a book. Leaf didn't ask. "You ever hear of Ranger Net, Leaf-o?"

Leaf shook her head.

"Right, right. Only on the road for a month. What do you have, one Pokemon?"

"Two," Leaf said. "The other one is kind of…lazy, though."

"Lame," Belinda said, flicking through controls. She finished whatever she was doing, then placed the Pokedex on the table, spun it Leaf's way, and nudged it. "You know about the Pokemon Rangers, right? They're a bunch of do-gooders around the world? They do humanitarian missions. Stopped something from going down in Fiore about a year ago? Anywho.

"They're too big to do door-to-door jobs, but they want to, because hello, they're goody-goods." Belinda took another swig from her drink. "So, they figure, why not put jobs out there for Pokemon Trainers to take care of? It's totally paid, so all you've gotta do is register and take on a job. They're super-easy, too."

Leaf scrolled down the screen. "'Capture Abra, Normal Pokeball Only'. That's impossible."

"They're not all easy. Look…see, I did one like that."

Leaf read it aloud. "'Companion Wanted for Silph Corporation Function'."

"Yep. Real fancy thing. They pay for a nice dress, you get to keep it, all these geezers leer at you for a few hours…But you're kinda young for that."

Leaf deadpanned. "You think?"

"Here, this one's nearby!" Belinda tapped the listing. "'Missing Relative. Experienced Trainer wanted for Search Mission.' It's in Santa Monica, that's like, a few hours out from here. And the pay's not bad. You need at least one badge already, but you've got that. Here, give me your Pokedex. I'll sign you up."

Leaf started to fish her Pokedex from her bag, but then: "Can I read the whole thing first? I mean, I want to know if they want something I can't actually do…"

"What do you think they'll want, a ritual sacrifice? And besides, beggars can't be choosers, Leaf-o."

"Stop calling me that."

"I'm paying for your food tonight, so I get to call you whatever the hell I want." A smile and a head tilt softened the words. Belinda was unlike anyone in Pallet Town; genuinely helpful, but a bit of a mess, too…Most people walked a line between 'nice' and 'not nice'.

Actually, Gary Oak was like that. But that guy was a jerk and a half, and Belinda was giving her food and a job when Gary had just given her a beating outside Viridian City.

Not that she would ever admit to that.

Leaf handed Belinda her Pokedex.

Seconds later, Leaf had a mission.

"It's more of a side-quest, really," Belinda said. "Life's full of 'em. So, burgers or noodles tonight?"

#

Inside the mushroom-looking house, again.

The velvet carpet was thick under Leaf's converse shoes, and she walked slowly. It felt like walking on literal money, and the thought of what it would cost to clean the thing was a horror to itself.

"Be careful not to break anything, Bulbasaur," she said.

"Saur," Bulbasaur grumbled.

"I'm not saying you would. Just, you know…saying."

The door at the end of the hallway opened with a long creeeeak. Leaf pulled herself to attention: feet together, hands holding each other behind her back, spine straight and chubby cheeks dimpled in a smile. Jerk Gary Oak had called it her 'babyface'.

An older woman emerged and greeted Leaf with her own grin, spreading from ear to ear and activating wrinkles on her face in places Leaf didn't know you could get wrinkles. (But Leaf wouldn't dare say that.) "Leaf of Pallet Town," the woman said, with her voice almost as croak-y as the door. "So good to finally meet you. I hope you found everything okay."

It was a giant toadstool-looking building. What was there to miss?

"We got around okay," Leaf said. She gestured to her side. "This is Bulbasaur. He walks around with me…that's not a problem, is it?" Leaf added at the end, suddenly self-conscious.

The woman laughed to herself. She was shorter than Leaf, and the hump on her back was almost painful to look at. But then the woman looked Leaf in the eye, and there was then the matronly warmth of every grandmother, to every granddaughter, washing through Leaf at once.

"That will be fine," the woman finally said. "Please, come inside. There is much to discuss, but I'm afraid we won't be able to begin until tomorrow night."

"That's fine, ma'am."

"Please, call me Mindy," the woman said. "Only my grandkids call me ma'am, and only when they're in trouble." Another smile, and the door opened wider.

Leaf and Bulbasaur came through, and Leaf felt her uncertainty come off of her shoulders. This would be good.

If she could beat Brock and that stupid Onix which knew stupid Bide, then yes, she could take whatever job Belinda had signed her up for.

This needed to be good.

#

"There are two requirements to be able to do this job effectively, now," Mindy said.

The inside of the toadstool was an enormous house, but Leaf had only been shown yet another long hallway. Mindy led her to the kitchens, where she prepared two bowls of noodles, added enough meat and vegetables to feed Leaf for days, and sat down across from her at the thick oak table.

"The first one does require a gym badge," Mindy cautioned. "From any region."

"Oh, yeah," Leaf said. She pulled her bag up from the ground and showed the Pewter City badge to Mindy. "I've got it right here."

Mindy inspected the Pewter City Gym Badge for a moment. "Perfect. The Pokemon I'll be having you work with is going to be somewhere around level fifteen, so if he were to not obey your commands, that would be troublesome."

Leaf was about to mention that she didn't need to work with another Pokemon, because she had another one on top of Bulbasaur anyway, but Mindy slurped a few noodles and pressed on. "Now, the other one is more important. You will be going to the top floor of the building to complete the job. The top floor only opens at ten at night, and remains open until three in the morning, when it closes to change its layout. Anything you find up there is yours to keep. Time wasted might not have actually been wasted."

Mindy placed her bowl back down on the table with a loud clatter. She looked at Leaf with the stare from before.

Was Leaf supposed to be reacting to something?

Mindy asked, "Do you know what the job in my home is, Leaf?"

"No, ma-, er, Mindy."

"My son has gone missing," she said. "I bet you saw him on your way in. He's only a little bit younger than yourself, even though to you, I'm sure he seemed like a child."

Leaf waited for the but you're only a child yourself. It didn't come, and Leaf was thankful.

"He used to keep himself on the top floor. I wanted him to move on from this world, surely I did, Leaf, but my son was insistent. Without him, he swore, the toadstool above us would whither and die. So, he's been up there for almost thirty years now."

"So when he came downstairs," Leaf said, careful to sound casual even though they were talking about a straight-up ghost child. "The…the toadstool started getting hungry?"

"It's dying, dear. That's the wind all around outside. The toadstool's dying breaths."

…The mushroom-building-roof-thing is dying. Because its ghost caretaker is being a jerk.

…Why the hell did Leaf let Belinda talk her into this?

"Now, I'm certain you're tired from the day so far," Mindy said.

It was barely five-thirty. Leaf did not mention this.

Mindy continued, "If you wish to spend this first night simply getting settled, I won't hold it against you. Pretty young girls like us do need our beauty sleep." A wink. Leaf blushed.

Leaf remembered the hole in the side of her tent. "Getting settled. I…I don't have anyplace to—"

"There are so many rooms available here," Mindy said. "I was planning to offer you the one down the hall, first door on the left. Unless you're uncomfortable with the idea. I imagine I'm asking a lot."

Mindy smiled with her eyes. This woman did know she was a walking ghost story, after all.

"No, it's not…I mean," Leaf stammered, "That's very…generous of you, Mindy."

"Bulba," Bulbasaur said skeptically. Leaf would later remind Bulbasaur not to look guest housing in the ghostly mouth.

"How lovely," Mindy said. She clapped her hands together. She nodded exactly once, and then she collected the bowls and placed them in the sink. "I'll wash these after I show you to your room," Mindy said. "Feel free to leave the house at any time. Believe me, Santa Monica is lovely at sunset."

"But shouldn't I start planning out my tactics? Maybe see a map of the building, or—"

"Take your time," Mindy said. "When you get to be my age, Leaf, the one thing you'll be telling girls like you is to take your damn time."

#

The room was marvelous. King-sized bed, heavy drapes, her own bathroom fit for one of the five-star hotels in Saffron City, and Bulbasaur was allowed to climb on anything he wanted, too. Free access to any food in the fridge only sweetened the deal, and that was before Leaf asked about the pay. As in, did any time she took or any food she ate count against her paycheck at the end.

Mindy seemed offended that Leaf had even considered that.

And when Leaf and Bulbasaur went out to the river to watch the sunset, where the orange sun collapsed against Mt. Moon and illuminated the skyscrapers in Cerulean, not even a month away in Leaf's adventure…

Some days.

Leaf picked up her Pokedex and dialed for Belinda. "Hullo?" Belinda answered.

"I can't do this," Leaf said quickly. She was on the bridge over the water, watching it ebb and flow and consciously trying not to drop anything in it. "This job is insane. I'm dropping it. I am gone. Out, gone, later days, sayonara, done."

Belinda yawned. She said something to someone in the background, who sounded suspiciously like the boy who worked the snack stand at the hostel. "Did that guy with you ask for his…shirt?" Leaf asked.

"I don't poke around in your life," Belinda shot back, even though it was total BS. "Anyway, don't you dare come back to Pewter without beating that mission! You'll look like a flake-out to Ranger Net!"

"…I'm supposed to care what Ranger Net thinks of me?"

"Fine, then. Harry's going to think you're a flake-out."

Leaf went silent. Could Belinda hear a fast heartbeat through the phone?

"Hey, gotta go. Bartender boy can't find his shirt. Guess I have to help look for it." And: "Air quotes around 'look', by the way."

"Right," Leaf groaned. She hung up the phone.

So much for that.

The sun was about set, now, having turned blood red when it crossed the halfway mark below the horizon. Leaf leaned off of the bridge and put her Pokedex away, then looked back to Bulbasaur at her feet. "Buuuulba," he said, and Leaf answered, "But we just ate, man," so Bulbasaur replied with a resigned "Saur."

"Looks like we'll be in town for a while anyway," Leaf said. "What do people stuck in a weird town for a week or more"—she shuddered at the thought'—"What do they do?"

She counted off on her fingers.

They get library cards.

They buy temporary metro passes.

They loiter in parks and wait for other Trainers to fight them. (This was the worst.)

"Or," Leaf said aloud, "I guess I could call home…"

She stood there on the bridge, hand over where her Pokedex rested in her bag.

Behind her. A tap on the shoulder, hard.

Hard enough to push her back into the bridge, and hard enough to make her grip the railing to not fall over. Leaf yelped, and Bulbasaur growled in protest.

When she pushed herself away, the person behind her was long gone, but Bulbasaur was running after the assailant on all four of his chubby legs.

"Bulbasaur! Come back!" Leaf shouted as she chased after it. Bulbasaur led them back to the main downtown area, where the sidewalks disappeared, and people and vehicles alike traveled on the cobblestone roads. Paper lanterns had been strung between rooftops and they glowed to light the way. Leaf found Bulbasaur another block down, and she took off at a clip, cutting past families and almost trampling more than one older person. Leaf shouted "I'm sorry!" and "Excuse me!" in her wake, and at the next intersection, Bulbasaur finally stopped.

Leaf doubled over and rested her hands on her knees. She fought to catch her breath. "Too many hot dogs," Leaf grumbled. "Too many hot dogs…"

"Bulba!"

"Yeah, good job chasing after him," Leaf said. She stood upright again. Except for the people she'd just run over, nobody in the downtown intersection was paying any attention to them. "I guess we lost him," Leaf said, adjusting her hat. "The bum. Who goes around pushing people, anyway—"

Beside her, this time: "Don't trust a word she says."

Leaf jumped out of her skin, and Bulbasaur did the same, jumping all four paws off the ground.

Between them: the boy from the toadstool house.

Leaf got a better look at him, now. His hair was long, but it was also uneven, as though he'd tried to cut it himself for a long time. His clothes weren't just old; they had holes all over, and where they weren't small moth holes, but rather wide-open, torn-from use, gaping gaps in the fabric.

The boy pushed his hair out of his face. His eyes were black like the night above them.

The boy's voice was sandpaper. "I'm only warning you once. You should leave this city."

"I…Wait." There were too many questions in Leaf's head, and this is a ghost person! underscored all of them. "Don't trust Mindy? She's your mother. She wants me to help you—"

"You should leave."

And then he was gone, in the instant it took Leaf to blink her eyes.

"Hullo?" She asked the empty space. She reached out and felt the space where he used to be. "Mister Ghost Boy?"

Bulbasaur watched the same space, his big green eyes scanning up and down. Eventually he shook his head and gave a long, drawn-out "Bulbasauuuuuuuuuuuur…"

"You said it, pal," Leaf said.

Bulbasaur took a stance and stared daggers in the space behind Leaf, but she was ready this time. She turned on her heels and had her fists ready. "Look, ghost dude, stop bugging me or I'll—"

"Ghost guy?" Gary Oak said, standing in front of her with his stupid jerk Gary Oak grin and running a hand through his stupid auburn cowlick. "Man, you really have lost it."

It's always nice to come back to FFN.

Review if you like, hit the 'story alert' button if you're interested in seeing where this takes Leaf, and I hope you do both! It'll be a ride. Relatively short and sweet, but a ride nonetheless. =)